


my heart has grieved, though you are here now

by silentbutdeadly



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Established Relationship, Future Fic, Kid Fic, M/M, Married Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-31
Updated: 2018-10-31
Packaged: 2019-08-11 04:48:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16469063
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silentbutdeadly/pseuds/silentbutdeadly
Summary: “Hey, sweetheart?” Keith calls out, his eyes glued to the computer screen.The leather couch squeaks behind him as Lance shuffles around, his head popping up on the backrest. “Yes, my darling?” he simpers, posing like Shirley Temple before a grin slides across his face.“Do you think we should learn Tagalog?”--Wherein Keith and Lance have a conversation about language, identity, and their daughter Alaina.From@pbeltarts'solder Klance AU.





	my heart has grieved, though you are here now

“Hey, sweetheart?” Keith calls out, his eyes glued to the computer screen.

The leather couch squeaks behind him as Lance shuffles around, his head popping up on the backrest. “Yes, my darling?” he simpers, posing like Shirley Temple. A grin slides across his face, handsome and sun-kissed with hints of his age peeking through the corners of his smile.

Keith snorts, fighting to keep a straight face (though when can he ever, really, with Lance). He needs to focus on the task at hand. He coughs in his shoulder to pull himself together before he faces Lance with what he hopes is an appropriate gravitas. “Do you think we should learn Tagalog?”

Lance’s forehead wrinkles before clearing up in understanding, his eyes keen. “Oh, you mean for Alaina?” he asks.

“Yeah,” Keith says, biting his lip. Yes, for Alaina, but both he and Lance know that he’s got a bit of a stake in this too — he remembers his dad teaching him Japanese to speak with his grandparents, but they’d passed away before Keith had even gone to school. After his dad had gone, there hadn’t been anyone else to practice with for years. By the time Shiro had come around, Keith had maimed his vowels and bitten his consonants into an American accent good enough to beat back the warped echoes of his classmates, taunting him from behind. Now he’s stuck with a voice that can’t find its way home, no matter how familiar the road appears. “I just don’t want her to lose that part of her too, you know? Not when I know how bad it feels, and I did that voluntarily.”

Lance frowns. “Well, I don’t know if that was exactly _voluntary,_ from what you’ve told me. I get it, though. She’s got us, but she’s had too much taken away from her already. She should have her own culture, especially when it's one of the few things her birth parents left her.” He pauses, pensive. “Polyglotting the baby is fine, right? She’s picking up Spanish really quickly and it’s _really_ cute.” Lance’s face goes mushy and soft, the way it does whenever he thinks about Alaina doing pretty much anything. “If she ever stops calling me papi, I’m just going to waste away and melt into the ground.”

Keith can’t help but smile at Lance. “Don’t do that, you’ll leave me alone with a moody teenager.” He chuckles at his vehement protest, and only pretends to fight back when Lance lunges over the couch and tackles him. Despite Lance’s height advantage and the backrest between them, Lance ends up pinned on the couch, breathing heavily from the exertion. He blows away Keith’s hair from where it’s tickling his face and pouts when he only makes it worse.

Keith kisses his husband, soft and slow and tender, before pulling away to lie on his chest. The beat of Lance’s heart plods away under his ear, soothing him with its constancy.

“We should definitely get more Tagalog in the house,” Lance says, his voice vibrating through his chest. “I know she still understands it, so we just have to make sure she — we —keep learning.”

“Did you notice that she perks up more than usual when she hears you say ‘table’ in Spanish?” Keith asks, pushing himself up to look at Lance.

“Yeop,” Lance says, popping the p. “Turns out the word for table in Tagalog is really similar. I looked it up, Tagalog’s got a lot of Spanish loan words, so it’d make sense that Alaina would recognize some of them. Can’t believe that I thought she just really liked furniture.”

Keith snorts. “You did not.”

“Did too!” Lance objects. “I mean, what else would I think if my kid kept spinning around whenever ‘la mesa’ came out of my mouth?” He scooches down, jostling Keith so that they’re eye to eye, or, in Lance’s case, eye to forceful stare and caricature eyebrows. “What would _you_ think, Keith Kogane-McClain?” Lance demands.

Keith shushes him with a hand over his mouth, which does nothing except intensify Lance’s stare. He has to muffle his laugh into Lance’s chest before he can remind Lance to keep it down, Alaina’s sleeping in and it’s Sunday — a surefire, if slightly cheap way to win. Lance knows this, and glares at him in mock disdain before turning his face away, pouting at the wall. Keith caresses his cheek and trails his fingers down the side of Lance’s neck, following its tendons and veins. He can see Lance fighting the urge to arch into the feeling. Keith grins, smug.

Lance growls and swoops in to peck Keith, peppering kisses all over his face and making sure to get him on the neck where _he’s_ ticklish. Keith barks a laugh and barely holds back the next ones as Lance turns it into an all out tickle war. How they manage to stay on their couch, Keith has no idea. He finally gets to breathe when the creaks of an opening door echoes through the house. He glares at Lance, who only smirks back. “You woke her up!” Keith whispers, miffed.

Lance eyebrows lift sardonically. “Wasn’t me screaming,” he shoots back.

Keith has a witty retort on the tip of his tongue when their daughter appears, rubbing her eyes and wearing her butterfly-patterned pyjamas. Kosmo dutifully trots along behind her — the two of them are rarely apart for long, and it's hard to tell which of them loves the other more. She yawns, walking towards them until she gets near enough for Keith to scoop her into his lap.

“You’re up early,” he says, combing his fingers through her hair, feather-soft even at the age of six.

“I heard you and Papi playing—“ she yawns again, “so I came out to play too.”

Lance slides closer to the both of them, his arm resting behind Keith’s back. “Aw, mija, I’m sorry we were noisy and woke you up. You can go back to sleep if you want, you’ve still got some time left.”

“No,” she says, with a stubborn jut of her jaw. It’s all Lance, and Keith tries hard not to lose it in front of both of them. if the way Lance is side-eyeing him is any indication, he’s not doing a very good job. “You and Daddy are having fun and I want to join in too.” She looks at Keith, and tilts her head like a pint-sized lawyer cross-examining a witness. He gives in, laughing and kissing her messily on the cheek.

“It’s wet!” she squeals, wiping her face. “Daddy, you kissed me and you got my face wet and now I’m going to have germs!”

Lance tugs his shirt out and uses the hem to clean her cheek and her hands. “Daddy’s sorry, and so am I, even though I know how to give a kiss on the cheek,” Lance says peaceably. Keith rolls his eyes, fond and exasperated and Lance's sly attempt at staying in their child's good graces. “Did you learn about germs from Tia Pidge?”

She nods, her curls bouncing up and down from the sheer energy radiating out of her. “I did, and she said that if you don’t take care of yourself, bacteria’s gonna come and get you! And then you’ll be sick,” she adds solemnly.

“That sounds about right,” Keith agrees. “That’s why we wash our hands when we come home and right before we eat.”

Alaina nods some more, and giggles when she outbalances and nearly topples out of Keith’s lap. “Careful,” Lance warns. He shoots Keith a look over Alaina’s head, questioning eyebrow raised just so, and Keith nods.

“Bebé,” Lance says, waiting for Alaina to turn around and face him, “Daddy and I were wondering if you still knew some Tagalog.” His grip on Keith's waist tightens ever so slightly, and Keith presses his back against him in reassurance. They understand each other, partners in a unique dance that continues long after the music that brought them together has ended: _I've got your back._ They wait; Alaina looks to be deep in thought, mouth squished in a comical grimace as she stretches out her arms.

“Mmmm, I think I know a little bit,” she eventually decides. Keith’s stomach sinks a little — at this age, she doesn’t yet know what she’ll lose if she forgets her mother tongue. She carries on, oblivious to her dad’s concern. “You speak Tagalog, don’t you, Papi?”

“Who, me?” Lance says, acting surprised when Alaina nods. “No, mija, I just speak Spanish. I think a few of the words are the same, though, what do you think?”

“Mmhmm!” she says again. “It’s the same when you say, when you say something like—” she pauses, scanning the room, and gives a little scream of delight when she spots the scuffed leather of Keith’s motorcycle boots through the doorway. She points at them, yelling, “Sapatos! They’re Daddy’s sapatos!” 

“Zapatos?” Lance echoes.

Alaina grins, showing off the gap in her teeth from where a canine had fallen out just last week. “Sapatos!”

“I see,” says Keith, making eye contact with Lance again before looking back at their little girl. “How would you feel if we started using Tagalog a little bit more around the house?”

Alaina’s eyes go big and round, not unlike a certain someone who’d been staring at him minutes earlier — only this time, they’re filled with disbelief. “But Papi just said he doesn’t know Tagalog, and you don’t know it either, Daddy.”

“That’s…true,” Keith concedes. “But we can learn, and then we can speak it in the house just as much as we speak English and you and Papi speak Spanish. That way, you won’t forget your roots.”

“We can even enrol you in a school that teaches you Tagalog and Filipino culture on the weekend,” Lance adds. “I know a couple people who went to schools like those, and they spoke like natives. Or, well, as good as.” 

Alaina wrinkles her nose. “But _school_ ,” she complains, clearly not in favour of this idea, “and it’s the _weekend_.”

Lance coughs. “Well,” he says, “you wake up for early on Saturdays for your cartoons. It won’t be too different, except this time you get to watch cartoons _before_ going to school.” Lance grins and does jazz hands, making Alaina laugh.

“You can think about it,” Keith says. “You don’t have to pick now. Papi and I just thought it’d be a good idea if you kept on practicing your Tagalog, so you don’t forget it.” _Please don’t forget it_ , Keith silently prays over his star-bright child.

“I’ll think about it,” Alaina says resolutely. She’s on the edge of Keith’s lap — she kicks her feet out, swirling them in circles and waving her hands back and forth. Keith watches her, charmed by her fidgeting. “But first, I want pancakes.”

Lance detaches himself from Keith and stands up. He moves in front of them and salutes Alaina, as sharp he'd ever greeted any of his instructors. “Roger that, Queen Alaina. Commander Lance, off to make blueberry pancakes!” he declares, marching off into the kitchen.

“I also want garlic knots!” she yells, before Keith shushes her.

“It’s not quite time for garlic knots yet, Bé,” he says with a smile. “But let’s go and watch Papi cook.” Keith picks Alaina up, and they join Lance in the kitchen.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote in one sitting and finished at 4am when I found out that Keith and Lance's daughter Alaina from [@pbeltarts's](https://twitter.com/pbeltarts) older Klance AU was Filipino. 
> 
> I might've projected a bit (a lot).
> 
> Title is a possibly gratuitous translation of a lyric from [Ikaw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVAV64sW4qQ) by Yeng Constantino.


End file.
